China reported an acceleration in foreign direct investment, suggesting government measures to slow the economy aren't prompting overseas companies to scale back their expansion plans.
Investment from abroad increased 11 percent from a year earlier to US$25.9 billion in the five months through May after rising 10 percent in the first four months of this year and 7.5 percent in the first quarter, the Beijing-based Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site. Contracted investment, a sign of future investment, jumped 50 percent to US$57 billion.
China's growing demand for cars, computers and cellphones is attracting investment even as the government aims to slow economic growth to 7 percent this year from a seven-year high of 9.1 percent last year.
"China has problems other countries would want to have -- its economy is growing too fast," said Thomas Gerhardt, head of global emerging-markets equities at DWS Investment GmbH. Western companies "will continue to invest money in China."
Volkswagen, the biggest foreign carmaker in China, said it will open three more factories in China, as part of a 60 billion yuan (US$7.2 billion) plan to double production there by 2008. General Motors said it plans to spend US$3 billion with its partners in China in the next three years to more than double production.
This expansion is being welcomed by China even as the government says excessive expansion in industries including autos, cement and steel is to blame for power cuts, transport bottlenecks and accelerating inflation.
China's producer prices rose 5.7 percent last month after gaining 5 percent in April, the Beijing-based National Bureau of Statistics said on its Web site.
ProMOS Technologies Inc (
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts